Construction of HK-G submarine cable interconnecting with SEA-US begins

Sept. 25, 2017

RAM Telecom International, Inc. (RTI) and NEC Corp. (NEC; TSE: 6701) say that the Southeast Asia - United States (SEA-US) fiber-optic cable system is ready for commercial service, and that construction of the interconnecting Hong Kong - Guam (HK-G) cable system extension has begun.

In April, RTI-C and NEC Corp. announced that the latter as the HK-G extension system supplier (see "RTI-C, NEC launch of Hong Kong-Guam submarine cable construction"). According to NEC, HK-G's marine route survey has now begun, which will provide information required to determine engineering of the final route. The 3,900-km HK-G will land in Piti, Guam at the same facility used for SEA-US, the recently finished Teleguam Holdings LLC (GTA) cable landing station.

SEA-US Cable Route and HK-G Extension

"Transpacific capacity demand will continue to outweigh existing supply for many years to come, and RTI's SEA-US investment is now providing essential route diversity capabilities and onward connectivity options for our clients," said Russ Matulich, RTI's president, and CEO. "Initiating the HK-G marine route survey is an important milestone towards our goal of providing fully diverse transpacific connectivity. Once completed, HK-G will seamlessly interconnect with SEA-US, allowing customers to not only diversify their traffic between Hong Kong to Los Angeles, but also enabling them to port their existing capacity to different destinations."

A consortium of seven global telecommunications companies agreed to cooperate in the construction and operation of the SEA-US submarine cable system, and NEC was announced as the system supplier in September 2014 (see "Global consortium to build SEA-US undersea cable system"). RTI is the second member of the SEA-US consortium to announce that the undersea cable system is ready for service, following Hawaiian Telcom (see "SEA-US undersea cable system bringing broadband speeds to Hawaii is ready for service").

The SEA-US consortium consists of PT. Telekomunikasi Indonesia International (Telin), Telin USA, Globe Telecom, RTI, Hawaiian Telcom, GTA, and GTI Corp. (a member of the Globe Telecom group of companies).

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